Cinematographer Robert Richardson says he anticipates working on Quentin Tarantino’s next film in 2027, as a documentary about Richardson launches at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF).
“The intention is to work with [Tarantino] again,” Richardson told Screen. “He is in that phase of working on a play [The Popinjay Cavalier, scheduled to open in London’s West End in January 2027].
“He’s not going to talk about where he’s going [with a next film]; it’s some time next year, the exact time isn’t locked. It could be prepped in the summer, it depends on how the play does and where it goes.”
Richardson said he and Tarantino have not discussed what the next film will be, with Tarantino having said that his next feature film will be his last as director. “The next film will be a very fresh Quentin,” said Richardson. “He’s going to get out of The Movie Critic [a script which Tarantino planned to make as his final feature before abandoning the project in 2024] and the sequel to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. This next chapter will be something fresh.”
Richardson explained how he dropped out of Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic Michael to join The Movie Critic, before the latter’s demise. “I was already signed on to make Michael,” said Richardson. “Quentin called me and said ‘I know you’re on Michael, and I would like to ask if you could ask Antoine if he would release you to do my last film.’”
“In my head I’m thinking ‘I can’t make that call’,” said Richardson, who has shot six Tarantino features including Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2 and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. “But I did, and there wasn’t a moment of hesitation from Antoine. He said ‘Bob, you go, because you and Quentin should finish your relationship.’”
“But then Quentin called me a month later and said ‘I’m not going to make it, I’ve written a new script’. He sent me that, and that’s more or less what Fincher is now making [the upcoming The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, a standalone sequel to Once Upon A Time… written by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher].
Richardson said he was also originally set to shoot the latter title, before it was delayed due to Brad Pitt making F1. “So that film died,” said the cinematographer. “That was basically one-and-a-half to two years that I didn’t work.”
The White Devil
Richardson is attending KVIFF to receive an honorary Crystal Globe award, and for the world premiere of Robert Richardson: The White Devil, Czech director Jana Hojdova’s documentary about the cinematographer.
The film tracks Richardson’s life and career, including collaborations with Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Fuqua, Andy Serkis, Ben Affleck, and Barry Levinson.
Tarantino, Scorsese, Stone and Serkis are among the talking heads featuring in the film, which French sales firm B-Rated International acquired for worldwide sales and distribution last month.
The project began after Hojdova emailed Richardson in 2016 with some questions for her thesis, for her cinematography degree at Czech Republic’s FAMU film school.
“I get that quite often and always say no,” said Richardson, who found something different in Hojdova’s questions. “They were what I would rather answer, about family, where I grew up, my influences, what my parents were like.”
“I sat down one day and scrawled out 50 pages and sent them back, then more questions came. And eventually we got to 400 pages.”
Hojdova then came to the New Zealand set of Baltasar Kormakur’s Adrift in 2017 and began capturing interviews with Richardson and his collaborators, starting a production that lasted several years.
When the pandemic began in early 2020, Hojdova found herself stuck at Richardson’s home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts for three months, adding a different dimension to the documentary. “I was stuck in the house, and she was extraordinarily persistent,” said Richardson. “She started to go through boxes and found DVDs, photo albums, diaries, furniture from other lives of my life.”
“She would say ‘let’s talk about this book, we’re going to do Casino, we’re going to do Platoon’ [two films shot by Richardson]. I would say ‘No, I’m done, let me just watch a movie.’
“I joke that she’s a director, but she’s a dictator,” said Richardson. “She set the scene and laid it out before I got there, and I’d have to do it.”
In a distribution climate where “for a lot of voices in the global environment, there’s no way to get your films out”, Richardson is grateful for the opportunity to showcase the film at KVIFF. “The festival can bring films that would not ordinarily be seen to the front. I worry about films that don’t have this level of PR that will suffer because they never actually get into the light.”
Richardson said streaming companies eschewing theatrical releases is a “problem”, and that he would prefer all streaming platforms to utilise single purchase transactional models. “Then you have a record of what comes in and what goes out. I have probably 4,000 films in my library on my computer.”
KVIFF runs until Saturday, July 11.
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